Searching for an old cabin on Horsetail Creek - 2012/02/13

Sunday February 12th a group of us from portlandhikers.org set off to see if we could find the remains of an old cabin that had been reported south of the Horsetail Ridge Trail but not seen since the 80's. To make a day of it we first hiked the old Russ Jolley Trail (RJT) to the second shelter then bushwhacked a new route up to the Rock of Ages Trail (ROA). From there we hiked to the junction with the Horsetail Creek Trail (HTC) before leaving the trail again & searching for the cabin on 2 different forks of Horsetail Creek. after a short while we found what we were looking for but sadly nature had consumed the cabin! From here we headed back to the Horsetail Creek trail and traveled along it until just before it begins it's decent to Oneonta Creek. Instead of descending we left the trail again & traveled down Horsetail Ridge (HTR) to the Arch rock formation near the Northern end of the ridge line. Along the way we got some good views of the Devils backbone on the ROA trail. From the Arch we descended a steep slope that put us back on the Russ Jolley just before it's junction with the 400 tail & Ponytail Falls. All told about 9.9 miles & 3,700' of EG.